General Japanese Culture Thread

X8 Yeah that's very much the problem with the movement, or at least the movement as it's portrayed online. It's a very good idea for men to protest the stupid gender role that they are shoved into, in fact it's brilliant, but blaming women for those roles is incredibly stupid. They're Right for the Wrong Reasons.

X5 Wait so the more sausage a lady eats the more she will want my sausage?

edited 17th May '15 7:16:23 AM by Silasw

From the perspective of Chinese medicine, the Western staple foods of wheat and red meat are seen to have much more chi - which fuels energy, strength, stamina, and sexual desire among other things - than foods typical to Asians such as rice and vegetables. Now that's not that saying Asians are all vegetarians, and they have been consuming meat for just as long in time as anybody, but your typical Asian citizen is going to consume less meat and wheat than an average Westerner. Plus, another huge factor comes from the protein-rich dairy front, which again is considered to contain increased quantities of chi when compared to the Asian staple drinks of tea and water; the vast majority of ethnic Asians, around 80-90%, are lactose intolerant, primarily due to how cows historically originated in Europe and presumably the native Caucasians have been consuming milk far longer than any other people on Earth. Again, that's not saying that Asians do not totally drink milk, a phenomenon with in fact rising prevalence today, but milk consumed in Asia has a heavy leaning upon soy-based or lactose free variants, the former supposedly associated with high amounts of estrogen, which supposedly decreases sex drive and libido.

edited 17th May '15 7:08:18 AM by FluffyMcChicken

Milk was pretty well-stocked when i was over there. Cereal was not, however, so my breakfast options were limited...

Never seen anyone drink milk over there. Mostly they use it in their coffee or along with some other product.

Not sure if Vice News is to be trusted, but get a load of this.

I'm not sure how scientific the idea that red meat increases sex drive is. It sounds more like an urban legend tbh

It's true that those "internships" exist and will probably become more common as time goes along. Might go the way of Singapore at some point.

It's difficult to say how far the "internship" programs go though, so I'd take it with a grain of salt.

well that internship thing actually made me a little sick. :(

honestly, I always saw Japan having to get immigrant labor to be an inevitability, giving their dwindling population, but I also saw it as something that should have an actual positive long term effect.

I mean, yeah there'd be growing pains when it started, but I saw Japan having more foreigners in it would help them move past so many of their problems and accept that change is not a bad thing.

but I see they'll be clinging as hard as possible to avoid that, with some rather nasty and horrible outcomes.

The J-government and people are fine with educated Western Europeans/Americans being the migrant labour. Cheap labour from other Asian countries are very often discriminated against.

Not to mention it will give the uyoku more ammunition against them, by using the "they took our jobs!"-argument. And as people get more afraid of their future they'll start to buy it.

What is the perception of modern Japan towards Hideki Tojo?

He's enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine. Need I say more?

When taking Hideaki Tojo, you take the entire baggage of World War 2 and Japanese imperialism.

In other words, it's either shrugged off or you have a heated argument with the uyoku.

Honestly, I have a hard time getting up in arms about Yasukuni Shrine. It's a war memorial. Just because the guy is a war criminal doesn't mean he's he didn't serve his country, so saying that he shouldn't be enshrined in the place where literally every person who has died fighting a war on behalf of Japan seems petty.

edited 18th May '15 8:54:24 AM by NativeJovian

Considering I have no idea what that means, yes, I would appreciate it.

Yasukuni Shrine. tldr, it's a Shinto shrine housing anyone ever killed while fighting for Japan. This pisses some people off, given that that includes convicted war criminals (including "class A" war criminals, like Tojo). Being enshrined technically makes them "kami", which is a Shinto thing most often translated as "deity", but something like "spirit" is probably closer to the mark to Western sensibilities. Still, being enshrined as a kami implies respect (if not necessarily worship), which is why some people get up in arms about war criminals being enshrined at Yasukuni.

As Native Jovian mentioned, it's shrine that acts as a war memorial for those who died in WW 2. This wouldn't be a problem, if they didn't have Class A war criminals enshrined there too.

I've been to the museum that is part of shrine area. It's basically run by historical revisionists. What we know as "The Rape of Nanjing" is called the "Nanjing Incident", glossing over the "war crime" parts.

This has made visiting the shrine an incredibly sore point, especially for China and South Korea. Other Asian countries too, although they aren't as vocal about it.

edit: 'd

edited 18th May '15 9:09:09 AM by TerminusEst

So he is generally seen in a positive light, you could say?

I am not whom to say where his ashes belong, but I was just wondering how history books in japan treated him

I can only say what I had in our school while I was in exhange there. The books are very frank about the war crimes that happened in Nanjing, for example. While sitting in class, I did notice that the entire World War 2 era was over in a couple of lessons. So they don't delve into it.

I did have some discussion about it with my hostparents, when I went back to Japan for a month last year, but basically they said "bad man". And generally thought that the war was a bad thing.

I'm going to say that Tojo, and his ilk, are seen as relics of an age best left forgotten.

edited 18th May '15 9:26:52 AM by TerminusEst

Considered that the abuse the average IJA infantryman copped, as well as the aftermath of US strategic bombing (something you hardly ever see the Chinese mention) that is understandable. I wonder if I can get myself a copy of Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths sometime...

Huh. Well that does answer my question. Thanks.

He isn't seen in a positive light, no. He is respected as war dead in a spirit of My Country, Right or Wrong, but that's only with people who are really observant Shintoists anyway.

The primary political ideology in Japan is apathy. Apathy towards the Great War, apathy towards their political system, apathy towards the opposite sex. This makes the country less conservative than it appears because then, of the smaller group of people who care, the plurality are the old conservatives.

I can certainly imagine that such a shameful event as the whole kurai tanima-era is not exactly something the Japanese like to talk about. It certainly didn't end to their advantage.

edited 18th May '15 9:31:31 AM by Greenmantle

And now for something completely different

Hideaki Anno believes that the days of the Japanese animation industry in its current form are numbered.

It's probably a bit too early to tell, but hopefully the staff working on them can actually get paid enough...

With the pace they have to work, they'll suffer karoshi before seeing any of the money.

A legitimate Star Wars anime shall send the nation's animation industry into mainstream hyperspace once more since The '90s - the Force be with it.

Disney would be wise to first hire Ota King of You Tube, then perhaps work out something with some Japanese studio to make this happen.

edited 25th May '15 7:25:33 AM by FluffyMcChicken